When you die can you still hear

The patterns of activity were similar to those seen in a sample of healthy controls, suggesting that people still hear as they die.

Importantly there's a difference between hearing something and understanding it. But, what we do know from this work, is that dying loved ones may hear something if we speak to them, explains Lawrence Ward , the study's senior author and a professor at the University of British Columbia.

The study was published on June 25 in Scientific Reports. How the brain "hears" during death — This study is based on the brain activity seen in 17 healthy control patients, eight responsive hospice patients, and five unresponsive hospice patients. Each patient was presented with two kinds of 5 note songs. One version was just five repeated notes, whereas others had changes in tones or differing patterns of tones. The healthy and the responsive hospice participants were asked to count the number of songs where those patterns changed.

As participants listened, the scientists looked for patterns of activity linked to those tone changes — which would signal that the brain had picked up on them. The scientists were searching for two very specific types of brain signals, which were actually identified in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study on non-responsive patients, and conscious patients.

The study revealed that when the brain detects a new sound, two things happen: First there's a "mismatch negativity response" MMN. This manifests as a quick dip in brain activity. Why Vettel visited a former F1 midfielder's Brazilian farm. A year old sprinter nicknamed 'Hurricane' broke a world m record, then said she was annoyed she didn't break it by more.

World Diabetes Day: How to plan healthy meals for children with diabetes. Chris kitching. Read More. Microsoft and partners may be compensated if you purchase something through recommended links in this article. Found the story interesting? Like us on Facebook to see similar stories. I am already a fan, don't show this again. Send MSN Feedback. How can we improve? Please give an overall site rating:. Privacy Statement. Help and Support. Opens in a new window Opens an external site Opens an external site in a new window.

Many people who have had near-death experiences describe a sense of "awe" or "bliss" and a reluctance to come back into their bodies after being revived. I interviewed brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, who described having a strikingly similar awe experience during her stroke which she detailed in her book My Stroke Of Insight.

Jill Bolte Taylor: I was bouncing in and out of the consciousness of my right brain. The left brain had the hemorrhage, growing at an enormous rate over those four hours. By the time I got to the hospital, the hemorrhage was about the size of my fist in my left hemisphere. Over the course of the morning, I drifted into blissful euphoria, the consciousness of my right brain.

And then I would come back online and attend to the details to get myself help. It was a movement in and out of being aware of external reality.

I was completely conscious through the entire experience, but only at some point could I attend to detail in the external world, recognize that it existed, or even care. Taylor : I was very blessed. I had zero fear. I was there in blissful euphoria in the right brain.

Or I was in the left brain, preoccupied with trying to figure out what I needed to do to orchestrate a rescue. Taylor: One hundred percent. That whole circuit—the consciousness of me as an individual—went offline. So I shifted away from the linear way of looking at the world and my relationship to it. I live more open to the possibilities of what can be and what is the best match for me.